PREP YEAR IN REVIEW: Small-Schools Boys Basketball Player of the Year Sammy Green of Marquette

Greg Shashack, gshashack@thetelegraph.com

Updated
9:23 am CDT, Sunday, July 15, 2018

Two seasons at Marquette Catholic produced a 59-5 record for Sammy Green, whose senior season earned 2018 Telegraph Small-Schools Boys Basketball Player of the Year honors.

Two seasons at Marquette Catholic produced a 59-5 record for Sammy Green, whose senior season earned 2018 Telegraph Small-Schools Boys Basketball Player of the Year honors.

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Billy Hurst / For The Telegraph

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Billy Hurst / For The Telegraph

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Two seasons at Marquette Catholic produced a 59-5 record for Sammy Green, whose senior season earned 2018 Telegraph Small-Schools Boys Basketball Player of the Year honors.

Two seasons at Marquette Catholic produced a 59-5 record for Sammy Green, whose senior season earned 2018 Telegraph Small-Schools Boys Basketball Player of the Year honors.

Photo:

Billy Hurst / For The Telegraph

PREP YEAR IN REVIEW: Small-Schools Boys Basketball Player of the Year Sammy Green of Marquette

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ALTON – The 2018 Telegraph Small-Schools Boys Basketball Player of the Year was among the area’s best shooters, but not its leading scorers.

Three teammates with the Marquette Catholic, in fact, averaged more than the 9.7 points per game scored by Sammy Green.

“It just shows what an unselfish basketball player he is,” Marquette coach Steve Medford said of his 6-foot senior point guard. “It isn’t about points to Sammy Green. It’s about getting others involved and, mostly, it’s about winning. That’s what he wants to do. And he’ll do anything and everything it takes to win.”

The player of the year will take that trait to Sioux City, Iowa to play college basketball with NAIA power Briar Cliff after two seasons with the Explorers yielded a 59-5 record. Green orchestrated the offense during a 29-1 season that saw Marquette finish No. 6 in the Associated Press’ final regular-season Class 3A state poll.

“I don’t really care about scoring,” Green said. “I always try to get my teammates involved in the game. That’s more fun to me than the scoring aspect of the game.”

Green led the Explorers with 6.4 assists and 2.7 steals per game, was third in rebounds with 4.4 per game while shooting 37 percent from 3-point range. But stats were just a complementary component in Green’s contributions for the Explorers.

“You can coach for years and years and years and there are not too many kids that you can pull aside who will understand exactly what you’re looking for as a coach,” Medford said. “Sammy was that kid. He is such an intelligent player with a real knack of just knowing how to play. He makes everyone else around him a better player.”

And, Medford said, none of the reasons why Green was not a big scorer for Marquette was an inability to score big.

“When a time came about when we needed to make a critical shot,” Medford said. “He was the guy we were going to go to. … He’s just a really, really good basketball player.”

The basketball IQ came from an early introduction to the game. His parents signed him up for a YMCA co-ed league as a kindergartner and he was placed on a second-grade team with older sister Hayli.

A basketball was a familiar companion for the son of a basketball coach. Green played both baseball and basketball into middle school, but seventh grade “was the point where I knew basketball is where I wanted to go.”

And Lee Green, a longtime basketball coach currently heading the Marquette girls program, was happy to show his son the path.

“Without him, I wouldn’t even be a basketball player,” Sammy Green said of his dad. “It’s good that he was in my life like that, always training, second grade, third grade, making me use a men’s ball or weight ball instead of a girls ball. Making me do one more than what the other kid was doing, at a very young age.

“So by the time I was in eighth grade, I already knew high school moves that I learned in fifth and sixth grade.”

High school for Sammy Green began with coach Mike Waldo’s Edwardsville Tigers. Green was one of the top talents in Edwardsville’s Class of 2018, but playing one class back of a group that cast a large shadow with Mark Smith, AJ Epenesa and Oliver Stephen all posting 1,000-point careers.

“Other than senior year going 28-0, my sophomore season was one of my favorites,” Green said of his last with the Tigers. “Mark is incredible. Ollie, one of the best shooters I’ve ever seen. Especially being a freshman, a 14-year-old kid playing for coach Waldo, it really made me turn into a man, basically, in three seconds or I wouldn’t have ended up being a basketball player.”

When Lee Green took the job as Marquette girls basketball head coach, Sammy Green also opted for Marquette as a junior transfer. He admitted to some regret missing the Tigers rise to a No. 1 ranking in the Class 4A state poll in a 30-2 season that saw Smith named the state’s Mr. Basketball, but no regret about becoming an Explorer.

“At the end of day, I had just as much fun at Marquette,” Green said. “It stung a little because I had played with those guys since fourth grade. At the end of the day, I did make the decision to transfer. I just got over it and we went just as far, we both went to super-sectionals.”

And that junior season made for an easy transition from the long halls of EHS to the cozier confines of MCHS. Green made an instant impact while helping the Explorers to a 30-4 season that included a Class 2A sectional title that brought the program’s first super-sectional trip.

“That was the most fun, going to supers,” Green said. “Even though we got smacked.”

Mount Carmel ended Marquette’s state dream with a 61-40 victory at SIU Arena in Carbondale. The sectional title triggered an IHSA enrollment multiplier that moved Marquette back up to Class 3A for Green’s senior season.

“There was nothing we could do about it, it’s the point system,” Green said of the move to 3A. “You either can cry about it or get over it. So we just had to get over it.”

The season would inevitably end – as do all seasons shy of a state title – in disappointment when the unbeaten Explorers were upset by Columbia in overtime at the Waterloo Regional final. Green’s friend of nearly 10 years Jordan Holmes scored 31 points, including a 5 of 6 night from the arc, to lead Columbia.

“Really the only thing we could have done differently was stop Jordan Holmes from shooting 100 percent from the 3-point line that game,” Green said. “Losing that game, it was heartbreaking. But I’ve been going against Jordan and playing with him since I was in third grade. And to see him do that, if I had to go down to anybody, I’m glad it was him.”

The drop back to Class 2A for next season’s edition of Marquette boys basketball will offer little consolation to Green or his graduated teammates. But the absence of a postseason plaque did not diminish the journey.

“It was, by far, the best basketball season I’ve ever had,” Green said. “Super fun. Even though we lost, it doesn’t take away what we did. Honestly, I don’t think anyone will ever go undefeated again in Marquette history. … I feel like we were the best team in Marquette history.”